大衆バル JAM — Restaurant in Kutchan

TLDR Came here starving after a day of skiing and onsen with a medium sized group. Cute toilet, bad food and service; wouldn’t come back.

Service was slow and variable: half our drinks arrived immediately, the others came after our food did. Never got the water we asked for. Super enthusiastic when taking your order at the start, especially with the mandatory 1 drink a person - then incredibly dismissive for anything else (water, soy sauce…). Our umeshu tasted pretty watered down.

Food was dismal: pretty small quantities unless you were ordering carbs (soba). The “salmon steaks” was actually a singular, relativey thin salmon fillet covered in corn-starched drenched cabbage stir-fry. “Squid tempura” was the some of the toughest squid I’ve had, with none of the panko breading we expected on something marked as tempura. The takoyaki was incredibly overfried bread, no tako. In contrast we also didn’t expect finger-food, michelin-style quantities for some of the chef-recommended items…

The space is nice and lively though, and the servers speak english well which made ordering smoother...

So this is a restaurant is Japanese . It isn’t really expensive. You can order delicious Japanese cuisine like scallop sashimi , bluefin tuna 🍣, raw oysters 🦪,salmon sashimi , edamame, buttered corn 🌽, raw wagyu flake bowl , cream cheese shiokara spicy cod , salmon roe and wagyu steak 🥩….. all kinds of comfort food 🍱. There are also various drinks such as balloon pitcher beer 🍺 (4L) sold at ¥8.500 , coke , green tea 🍵, oolong tea ☕️ and more ! The salmon roe was exceptional. Also the decorations are cozy and warm . The waitress there are polite and hard-working so that the food 🥘 comes REALLY fast . I recommend when it is snowing 🌨️, you go in there and get a mug of beer , sip some hot tea ☕️, then the food will be ready. Just sit back...

Our food was super delayed, it took them 50 min to make Yakisoba with no warning or update. I was served my bipimbap within 20 min and we just sat there waiting for another 30. I think they actually forgot about until we reminded them.

The taste was pretty ok, hence the 3 stars for food, but there was literally a single thumbnail sized piece of pork in both the bipambop and the yakisoba and they were both 2000 yen. The value is abysmal. Go somewhere else it is absolutely not worth the money. Been in Japan for 2.5 weeks now and it’s by FAR the worst value meal of the entire trip, I mean there’s a mandatory 10% service...